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Harvard’s Stake in the Fisher v. Texas Affirmative Action Case
Relieving fears at Harvard and elsewhere that it might strike down the use of race in admissions, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s affirmative action program in the case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin . …
Steven Spielberg and Drew Faust Address Harvard Commencement
Seats in the shade were in high demand in Tercentenary Theatre on the afternoon of the 365th Commencement Day. Graduates, trailing well-coiffed relatives, wandered the sea of off-white folding chairs, looking hopeful, then grim, then disconsolate. The …
“When You Hear These Lectures, They're All Me”
“These lectures are hard for me,” Toni Morrison, Litt.D. ’89, told her Sanders Theatre audience at her penultimate Norton Lecture . Years ago when she gave the Tanner Lectures at Harvard, she explained, the persistent questions from her literature …
Cambridge 02138
Harvard continues to be an acute embarrassment to me, but unfortunately not to itself. It will take my beloved College 20 years to overcome the damage it has done in running Summers off. What were you thinking of, you at the FAS? That only you can define …
Issue: May-June 2006
Programmed for Success?
In December 1978 , former Harvard men’s basketball player Thomas Mannix ’81 recalls, the team arrived in Hawaii for the Rainbow Classic amid a year of transition. That season, Ivy League freshmen had become eligible to play varsity basketball, and an …
Lost in Ideas
When an idea keeps him up at night—nudges him awake to lie there, eyes wide and mind working—that’s when television writer and producer Carlton Cuse ’81 knows it’s good. An epidemic of vampirism in New York City that, chillingly, sends the infected …
Issue: January-February 2016
Marc Hauser “Engaged in Research Misconduct”
The division of investigative oversight in the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has found that former Harvard professor of psychology Marc Hauser “engaged in research misconduct” in research …
A Case For Women
When Nitin Nohria became Harvard Business School (HBS) dean in mid 2010, he detailed five priorities, ranging from innovation in education and internationalization to inclusion. In setting out the latter goal, he said in a recent conversation, he aimed …
Issue: September-October 2015
The Power of Plants
Often overlooked, plants are arguably the most indispensable inhabitants of the planet. They absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen that supports life. They provide basic human necessities, including food, clothing, and shelter. And in communion with …
Surgery for All
“Global health” typically brings to mind issues such as vaccination, maternal care, sanitation, and malaria control. It’s not usually associated with surgery. But consider the woman who dies in childbirth because she can’t reach a clinic that performs …
Issue: July-August 2015
The Dark History Behind Chocolate
On a Thursday afternoon in late March, social anthropologist Carla Martin begins her lecture with a warning that might seem out of place at first in a course all about chocolate, one of the most delicious and beloved substances in the world. “You’re going …
Football: Princeton 51, Harvard 48
Harvard Stadium was in twilight when Saturday’s triple-overtime tie-breaker came to its crushing end, on a scoring pass from Princeton quarterback Quinn Epperly to Roman Wilson. Sound familiar? At Princeton Stadium a year ago, a scoring pass from Epperly …
“Fully Part of the Harvard Family”
The new First Generation Harvard Shared Interest Group (SIG) is “the natural outcome of Harvard’s very laudable HFAI [ Harvard Financial Aid Initiative ] program,” notes Kevin Jennings ’85, who founded the SIG and is launching an alumni-mentoring program …
Issue: September-October 2012
“The Genius of the Balafon”
In West Africa, Neba Solo, born Souleymane Traoré in 1969, is often called “the genius of the balafon,” says Ingrid T. Monson. So skilled a player, composer of songs, singer, and innovator is he that in 2002 his homeland, Mali, named him a chevalier de …
Issue: January-February 2006
Renewed, and New
T he university is now clearly embarked on an historic spurt of physical growth and transformation. Even before a shovel of earth is turned in Allston, where enormous campus expansion is envisioned, work just completed, under way, or about to start in …
Issue: May-June 2005